CANNES – Marco Kreuzpaintner will take on the wild life and young death of German director and Cannes Film Festival veteran Rainer Werner Fassbinder in his new film, Rainer.

Fassbinder shot 44 films in just 16 years before dying of a drug overdose, aged 37. He brought two films to Cannes: Fear Eats The Soul (1974) and Despair (1978). He remains one of the most influential directors of his generation, particularly in France.

Speaking to THR in Cannes, Kreuzpaintner said his film Rainer would not be a biopic but more a “melodrama in Fassbinder’s style. It will be a homage to his movies,” the Kreuzpaintner explained. “But we want to show the real Fassbinder, will all the dirt, drugs and excess.”

Kreuzpaintner, whose credits include Summer Storm (2004), the Kevin Kline-starrer Trade (2007) and Krabat (2008), is currently casting the lead for Rainer and hopes to begin shooting mid-April 2013.

Kreuzpaintner said he was not looking for “a Fassbinder look-alike or A-list star” but rather a character actor who can depict the “emotional truth” of the legendary director. The film’s script, which Kreuzpaintner is co-writing with Gerrit Hermans, will show Fassbinder both at the beginning and end of his career and will require the lead actor to go through a Raging Bull-style weight gain to depict the older Fassbinder.

“The story of the movie is basically how, all his life, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was searching for unconditional love and found only conditional love, with people taking advantage of him or he of them,” said Kreuzpaintner. “Of his immense professional success and his tremendous personal failure.”

Anatol Nitschke of Berlin-based deutschfilm will produce the $7.5 million (€6 million) feature together with Rezo Films in France. Iris Group of Luxembourg is also on board as a co-producer. Germany’s Senator Film, a partner in deutschfilm, will release Rainer in German-speaking Europe. Rezo will bow the film in France and is selling the project world-wide at the market in Cannes.